He is the philosophical grandfather of the modern Neoconservative movement. His acolytes were college professors for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. (And, another of Strauss’ students became a professor for many who founded the Muslim Brotherhood.)

One of his core teachings is an interpretation of Plato about the “Noble Lies” of religion and patriotism. The belief is that religion and patriotism are useful to train and channel the masses who are by nature intellectually inferior and therefore under-educated. For the ruling classes and elites, religion and patriotism don’t matter, as they are fully self aware, and loyal to the State and self. What becomes more important is not getting caught, as this causes cognitive dissonance in the masses. If one is caught, depending on the severity of the transgression, one should simply deny, ritually atone to the State and Church before the masses, or if atonement is not possible the member must be excised from the power structure.

With this in mind, go through every scandal on the right (government and religious), and try to find one that does not follow the progression of
(1) “My enemies will use this against me!” in the 80’s to “Fake news!” now.
(2) “I have SINNNED before Gawd!” *blubber*blubber*
(3) The person being disowned signified by FOX News showing the person with a D after their name. (If you don’t know about that, look up John Steward’s bit.)

Tom and Cecil, love your show, even when you’re wrong. Weaponizing allegations to move a political agenda seems to be the new McCarthyism. Most sexual crimes are he said/she said, and have little evidence to back them up, but have great personal impact and fallout. For people like Franken, you’re supporting the point of view that allegations are fact, and that an apology to acknowledge hurt feelings is an admission of guilt. Let’s hope that neither of you if ever accused of something you didn’t do, or did do something similar but it wasn’t what was reported, and forced to resign because of it. There is a reason we don’t try people in the court of public opinion, and it is interesting to me that a couple of skeptics have fallen into this trap before weighing the evidence.

I want to add to what pop-up said.
When it comes to misconduct I know it’s hard, but there should be some form of analysis of the type of misconduct, along with the time and type.
In the UK there was a guy who resigned and one of the women who said he had touched her knee 20 years ago, said that if that was the only reason he resigned it was stupid, as patting a knee is different to grouping a boob.
I agree that patting a knee or bottom was the type of behaviour that was not counted as sexual assault 20 years ago, but grouping the same areas was.
We had a MP who resigned as there was allegations of porn on his office computer, now this is the wrong thing to do at work, but not an offence that you should resign for. Now if it had been illegal porn with young children, yes, not only resign but be prosecuted.
Then we come to the Franklin and other people in the USA, now with what your president has been accused off, I wish Franklin would not have resigned when he did. Yes say that if found to have done anything wrong he would, but there should be a code of conduct which members need to follow. Now if an investigation was set up and this code implemented, then ALL members would need to follow it, so that when it was complete, if he had done something which they deemed wrong and not the type of conduct that will be excused for being 20 years ago and patting was fine then, but patting in the past 5 years is not, it would help the political people with scruples weed out the ones without them.

I also have been often patted and grouped on the behind, as I was a sprinted when younger I had according to the ladies a nice ass, and many did grab it, I never grappled their boobs back, but sometimes did their ass.
I was also accused of upsetting someone at work, due to wishing them a good rest of their life when they were moving to Canada, as when doing so I patted them on their shoulders for about a tenth of a second!